Hegseth Announces New Autonomous Warfare Command to Transform Drone Warfare
“Cheap compute, super intelligence, and advanced commercial manufacturing have enabled the proliferation of low-cost, high-precision strike.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the creation of Autonomous Warfare Command, or AutoWarCom, “a functional combatant command that will lead the Joint Force in unmanned and autonomous warfare.”
AutoWarCom will change how the department handles drones.
“Warfare, however, has changed dramatically and suddenly,” according to Hegseth’s memo. “Advanced computing now enables precise, low-cost weapons to be produced at massive scale. These systems increasingly threaten our costly legacy platforms and disrupt our force projection. Urgent change is required.”
Hegseth said at the U.S. Marine Corps Base:
Today, at my direction, we are announcing the creation of Autonomous Warfare Command, or Auto War Com, a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force in the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.
Drone warfare supercharged by SI [super intelligence]-enabled targeting is the biggest battlefield revolution in generations. You already know that. Yet when I was sworn in at the Department of Defense, there was scant urgency in this domain. That changed as soon as we took the helm. We immediately launched the drone dominance program to cut through red tape and move authorities out of the Pentagon and place it with commands.
And we established Task Force 401, led by Army Brigadier General Matt Ross, a phenomenal leader, now the leading counter-drone unit across the entire government to accelerate purchasing and fielding of these technologies.
We fused the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) with a direct report program manager called ADERPOM. That team has shipped thousands of autonomous systems of drones to the Middle East and around the world, delivering lethal capabilities and outcomes in days and weeks rather than months or years.
That’s the normal speed of the Pentagon: months or years. It’s a good start, but it’s certainly not enough. The pace of war is changing faster than the process to support it. Cheap compute, super intelligence, and advanced commercial manufacturing have enabled the proliferation of low-cost, high-precision strike.
.@SECWAR “Today, at my direction—we are announcing the creation of Autonomous Warfare Command, or AutoWarCom:
A new 4-star combatant command—with service-like authorities—built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the Joint Force in the fastest peacetime shift in… pic.twitter.com/kYWBxy6Dij
— DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) September 30, 2026
Hegseth told the audience that Ukraine’s response to Russia helped spur AutoWarCom.
“Ukraine’s lesson is not that one type of drone wins wars, but rather the need for a purpose-built system that maximizes the ability to adapt,” explained Hegseth. “We will fuse procurement with operations at scale, and then allow warfighters and engineers and entrepreneurs to learn, adapt, and rapidly iterate on their domain and their mission.”
Hegseth directed the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned
Systems (DRPM-UxS) to lead Project Agincourt.
DRPM-UxS will first form a pathway to AutoWarCom, which consists of directing “manpower, budget, acquisition authorities and create dedicated military career pathways for Officers and Enlisted personnel.”
DRPM-UxS will also work with Congress to secure proper legislation.
Hegseth hopes to establish AutoWarCom by October 1, 2027.
Owen West, a former Marine and assistant defense secretary, and Max Strasiser, a Navy SEAL, will lead AutoWarCom:
To supercharge the testing, purchasing and fielding of unmanned systems, West plans to expand on a series of industry competitions that his organization established over the past year under the military’s Drone Dominance Program.
For each competition, known as a “gauntlet,” dozens of companies are invited to put their commercial drones to the test, flying realistic missions created and piloted by the military. Top-performing companies receive orders within weeks of the final results, which are posted on a leaderboard for transparency.
At a recent gauntlet in Colorado, quadcopters were dispatched to attack vehicles, fly through tunnels and navigate buildings that resembled an embassy complex to hunt targets. The drones were required to cost less than $4,000 and be built in the U.S. with mostly American components.
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Comments
Love this guys optimism that its up to the Executive Branch to decide on things like this when everyone knows he needs permission from a district court judge.
not if he ignores said district court’s judge!
Greetings Dr. Falken….
Bringing in big idea/new idea/make the idea work sorts of folks from outside the org will help create change. People within the ‘system’ of the org often can’t break free of the constraints in their ideas imposed by the institutional process. Questioning the ‘way we’ve always done it’ isn’t usually tolerated b/c there’s a cohort of folks dependent upon the ‘way we’ve always done it’ to pay their salaries/justify their position.
I can’t fit another service flag on my flag pole! 🙂
So what ever happened to Hegseth’s grand plan to jack up the troops with testosterone injections. Did they go through with it or was that all just more circus and hype from the Trump administration. I mean it was reported a while back and then . . . nothing further. So did Hegseth go through with his idiotic plan or not. Inquiring minds want to know.
Claim posted four days ago:
“An LLM can not fire a pistol, so no worries that we’ll be walking down the street and we’ll be wiped out by a massive outburst of bullets.”
That aged well.
I;m impressed that they are actually going ahead with this now instead of playing catch up when is what they usually do, Like or not drone warfare is here to stay and its going to invalidate a lot of legacy warfare systems
The quickest way to find the flaws in any sytem is to make it a competition of not just established military complex companies but open to all. If you watch the robot wars on TV you see very creative solutions to defeat established robots. The Army would be wise to hire universities to attack their wonderful Abrahms tanks to see where they are vulnerable instead of only allowing big corporations who have a stake in the weapons defenses used. I think a new level of drone warfare will have a mother drone nearing the combat area and then launching many much smaller but leathal drones. Almost all drone defenses now find and shoot at a single drone and the mulitiple launch drone will give it fits.
At an office today person has child just graduate from West Point.. I asked where stationed. Heard person is now at MIT in a special drone/aeronautical course.
So here is precisely the development Anthropic drew their line in the sand about not wanting to support.
They get to say “I told you so” the first time it goes spectacularly haywire.
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